What It's Really Like to Be a Historical Consultant on The Crown

A major key to The Crown's continued success has been its ability to take an audience inside Buckingham Palace and give us what feels like a very real glimpse into what the British royal family is really like. Episodes feature so much rich detail about the Queen's private life that viewers are often left wondering, "How do they know that?"

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That's where Robert Lacey comes in. Lacey, who has been working with Peter Morgan for years, is the show's historical consultant. (He served in a similar capacity on Morgan's 2006 film The Queen, which starred Helen Mirren.)

Lacey shapes both the larger historical plot of the series and contributes details that help it to feel so nuanced and specific, but he's quick to point out that the Netflix program has a full research team in place. "The offices of The Crown are almost a newsroom. There are eight to ten researchers at this double bank of computers, with books, a library, everything, and they are working every day, preparing the raw material," he said.

"I help Peter with the bigger perspective and some of the smaller details, like, for example, how did Elizabeth and Margaret address their daddy?"

As it turns out, they called him Papa.

And while many of the questions about Philip, Elizabeth II, their relatives, friends, and employees can be answered by historical documents, not everything can be discovered by simply scouring letters, diaries, and notes of public record.

I don’t like the word false. I’d rather say is it true or is it invented?

"People say 'is it true or is it false?'" Lacey told T&C, speaking of the incessant fact-checking that comes with a show like The Crown. "I say, 'I don’t like the word false.' I’d rather say is it true or is it invented? Is it true or is it imagined? Because, you see there is a difference between history and the past."

"The past is one thing," he continued. "The past is what people lived through: lived and loved and betrayed each other and were true to each other. Most of the past vanishes. We don’t know the details."

We're left only with what was photographed, written down, or recorded.

"The comparison I make is with the historian holding out a sieve. All the past runs through it, and once you shake it, what’s left are the lumpy bits. That’s what the historian takes as evidence: the letters, the diaries."

But according to Lacey, there are other ways of understanding what really happened: "Through empathy," he says, "through imagination, through the psychology of characters. I’ve come to see that is just as valid as the dry documentation."

For Lacey, there can be truth without fact. For example, even if we don't know exactly what was said between the Queen and Prince Philip about the rumors of his affairs, we know the late 1950s was a troubled time in their marriage.

History is a truth, but there are other truths that are conveyed in the drama.

What the show recreates is that emotion, not necessarily a word-for-word transcript of their conversations. And the same goes for Princess Margaret's failed engagement to Billy Wallace. No, we don't have a recording of their breakup, but one only has to imagine how betrayed she might have felt, and that translates into an incredible performance from Vanessa Kirby in season two.

"I defend very strongly that this show recreates the past very plausibly," he said. "History is a truth, but there are other truths that are conveyed in the drama."

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